National health experts are calling for
changes to America’s health care system in a new report, warning it has become
too wasteful to continue in its present state and could hurt the nation’s
economic stability.
The Institute of Medicine, an
independent nonprofit National Academy which provides objective advice to the
government, released a report Thursday saying about 30 percent, or $750 billion, of health spending in
2009 was wasted on excessive administrative costs, unnecessary services, fraud
and other problems.
“Our health care system lags in its
ability to adapt, affordably meet patients’ needs and consistently achieve
better outcomes,” Mark D. Smith, president and CEO of California HealthCare
Foundation, said in a statement. “But we have the know-how and technology
to make substantial improvement on costs and quality.”
According to the statement, an estimated 75,000 deaths could have been prevented in 2005 if every
state had delivered health care at the quality of the best state.
The report recommends that the nation’s
health care system be turned into a “learning system” incorporating lessons
from every care experience and new research discovery. The report also
recommends improving and enhancing data sharing and collection, increasing
transparency about health care costs and increasing communication between
patients and doctors.
Christine Stencel, an Institute of Medicine
spokesperson, said the report is laying out a vision of major changes for not
only government agencies but for major health care organizations and the
public. She said health care providers need to engage patients and change the working
relationship between health care providers and their patients.
“We need to move from health care
providers saying ‘what we are going to do’ to providing options and making sure
families know all the information,” Stencel said. “As patients, we need to be
actively engaging and we need to ask questions so we can really consider what
is best for each of us.”
Stencel said the report was written to be mindful of the current health care situation including the Affordable Care
Act. She said provisions in the act can support the report’s recommendations,
but that the report is neutral and its recommendations can go forward
regardless of whether the act stands or not.
Pamela Herd, University of Wisconsin public
affairs and sociology professor and an expert in Medicare and social welfare
policies, said the recommendations will not address all the problems the system
faces.
Herd said changes are needed in the
administrative overhead of health care providers’ companies. Although she said
it was a simplification, Herd said by not having a primary-insurer health care
system as Canada has, insurance companies and health care providers are
replicating the same type of administration again and again.
Herd also said that a key part of regulating
unnecessary spending would be to regulate new innovations. Herd said often new
kinds of surgeries and technologies are not always going to improve patient
care and often times are introduced without clearly improving outcomes.
Herd said portions of the Affordable
Care Act do require demonstration policies to ensure that surgeries and new
technologies improve outcomes.
